Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — The Past, Here, and Now: another chance
The Hero’s first questions are where they are and what happened to Aleister. Warlic instead asks why the Hero wants to trust him as Warlic once trusted the Hero. Aleister believed Tara’s identification of him as the original Champion of Fire with all his heart; even after that identity became doubtful, he sincerely wanted to be their hero and friend. Warlic insists the Hero is different, but cannot easily explain how.
The Hero confronts the cost of the timeline fusion. Warlic remembers every lost life, family, friendship, victory, and happy ending, yet must start again with familiar faces who are no longer the same people. The Hero acknowledges having displaced his former Heroes and stolen those endings. Even so, Warlic treated them as a friend when they forgot what they were. Aleister deserves the same chance. Warlic predicts disappointment; Tara answers that some things matter more than an ending.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — The Past, Here, and Now: wounds carried onward
The Hero lies beside Warlic as Song confirms they have reached Mount Rubedo. The Queen’s forces have helped contain its fire, and the Luminary Coalition has taken civilians and the injured back to Thelima. Tara wishes the Hero could have gone with them, but Aleister flew directly to Rubedo and left little time. Astero escaped, Dahlia is nearby, and Maya remains missing. Muusa admits Maya had not been herself and offers to take responsibility for whatever she did to throw Fort Luma into chaos.
Henry asks whether they can offer more rest, but the Hero insists on helping. Warlic reveals how little the wounds have healed: the First Champion’s spectre used Aleister’s stolen flames to inflict them. He fears what those flames could do in Aleister’s own hands. The Hero sees another reason to find Aleister and seal Rubedo. Tara wants to know both brothers as they truly are, including their fears, and Warlic finally agrees to lay his heart bare despite the risk of losing everything again.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — The forest Warlic abandoned
Warlic says he woke in this world long before the Hero’s companions were born and waited in Warwick for familiar people to return. Years became centuries before Aleister found him. Panic overwhelmed his accumulated skill: he believed himself trapped in another cycle of misery and fear, and the encounter led to the forest’s enduring fire. He ran away rather than face it again. Now he describes Warwick as neither living nor dying, but suffering without release.
Aleister is his younger brother, created by their father to replace him. Warlic identifies that father as Wargoth, a being who enjoys destruction not merely as death but as the slow collapse of civilizations and their efforts to survive. Warlic escaped him in a world later caught in the fusion. He suspects Wargoth perceived that change and is now seeking both his lost son and the cause. His account makes the family connection explicit while leaving Wargoth’s full knowledge uncertain.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — A Phoenix’s Repeated Demise
Warlic’s ten once-only main quests begin after Drowned King in Yellow. A Phoenix’s Repeated Demise asks for eighty Black Feathers and a conversation with Geopetal. Even the usually serene Phoenixes lash out in the forest. Warlic wonders whether an early confession could have spared the crisis, then admits he could not bring himself to repeat bonds that had already been broken and erased so many times. Exhaustion, rather than a lack of feeling, had kept him silent.
Geopetal is coordinating evacuation as Warwick’s eternal blaze begins to spread. Thelima’s residents resist abandoning the peace they worked to build; Maya has not been seen among the rescued people there. Svala, Snowbeard, and Isiri have returned to the evacuated Sanctuary to discover what happened to Aiwass before leaving themselves. Roars and lightning now surround Albedo. At Citrinitas, Geopetal detected strange seismic activity and Astero’s retreat into the forge, but her shattered vessel cannot see what he is doing. Sigrid remains inside.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — Reopened Scar: a village older than the blaze
Reopened Scar requires six Rubedo Crystals and speaking with Song and Henry down the western path. Their Knights have discovered people burning like Maleno Matches. Since no one could reasonably have built a village in an eternally burning forest, Song believes the settlement predates the blaze. Warlic realizes these people may have been suffering since the event he fled. Pyroclast Breath asks for twelve Pumice Remnants while the party tries to give the Charred Remnants peace.
Song and Henry also report cornering the red-hooded entity near Rubedo with Elius’s help, only for the forge to explode after something or someone struck the peak. It is now a caldera. Some captured spies were Shadowscythe; others threw themselves into the flames rather than name their employer, leading the nobles to suspect the Jus Divinum. These reports widen the danger without identifying every unseen participant.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — Thermoformed Regret: the people left burning
Warlic stops Tara from approaching the village’s victims, warning she would burn with them. Their cries for help and for a mother make the long neglect impossible to dismiss. He says he left the mountain chain after the Flame of the Beyond and the First Champion of Fire perished, unable to bear what happened. Avoiding the forest left these people to suffer. Tara remembers Aleister healing such burns in Thelima: by taking his flames back, he could allow the victims to rest.
The Hero tries to conceal the pain as smoke catching in their breath. Warlic admits Aleister came to Lore in search of him, probably sent by Wargoth. If raised as Warlic was, his brother would have learned pain before being taught to inflict it. Warlic says he can smell burned planets in Aleister’s smoke and mana; those flames can harm the Hero because they have consumed other gods. Tara offers to slow the conversation rather than force him through every memory at once.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — Thermoformed Regret: what forgiveness would mean
Warlic calls both brothers monsters and says a fight with the Hero could end in mutual destruction even if they could not win. The Hero recognizes the possible loss of the universe but says they are not afraid of him. Warlic quotes the contempt for mortals he once sincerely believed: people were matches and toys to break. He asks whether that can be forgiven, and whether the Hero can still see him the same way. The silence matters; he then insists Aleister should receive the same treatment.
He is glad his brother reached Lore too early to find the present Hero and encountered the older Champion instead. Before the conversation can go further, Tara senses someone contacting them. It is Fiamme, finally willing to speak. Warlic’s later account remains unsparing about himself: he describes his brother as Wargoth’s masterpiece of destruction and admits that this was once his own role.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — Smoke Signals: the Onslaught’s responsibility
Smoke Signals requires a Rubedo Minium and speaking with Elius along the eastern path. The Firestorm Onslaught reached the mountains early and has contained the spreading fire with few casualties. Fiamme promised public absolution for their aid. Elius now accepts responsibility for the order left divided by Tyndarius: some hate the dead leader for making them outcasts, while others resent Elius for betraying him to help the Hero. He refuses to turn his own choices into a demand for sympathy.
Elius remembers telling Tyndarius that he hated him, but cannot separate every feeling from the Mana Affliction. He also remembers Tyndarius trying to make amends at the cost of his life. Abel’s anger at the Avatars has left him questioning how far responsibility reaches. Tara reports the wider response: her sister and Greenguard’s forces are at Rubedo’s foot, and Gravelyn is coming with the Shadowscythe. Mount Rubedo has been sending up towers of smoke since Aleister arrived.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — Forged Epics: Fiamme’s fabricated first Champion
Reflection in Oil asks for six Smoldering Ashes and speaking with Galanoth and Fiamme near the lake. Charred Remnants crawl from the water they entered to escape the fire, still burning. Galanoth explains that Fiamme appears only as a projection, unwilling to face him in person. She admits relighting the forges and awakening the Flame of the Beyond, the being now called Aleister. The old tale of a Champion defending her was false: Kolr fled, leaving her and Akriloth behind, and Aleister pursued him before entering the Plane of Fire.
Fiamme says both died. Aleister left the fragment that became Thelima’s obelisk, while Kolr’s body became ash and his soul was called to her. She and her other Champions then ignored him. Tara challenges that plural: was Kolr not the first? Fiamme says her first Champion was a little girl murdered by her own people for wielding alien power. Other places had their own supposedly first Champions, and Akriloth was not her first Great Dragon either. She made history appear perfect and undefeated while allowing Champions to die or dismissing them as disappointments.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — Forged Epics: the cost of reignition
Galanoth connects his uncontrolled fire during Skye’s captivity to Fiamme’s interference. She calls him her best Champion and says she could not lose him after Akriloth ruined his life. Reawakened forges would provide peerless weapons and strengthen him. Warlic rejects her description of what she risked: reaching beyond her Plane endangered Lore itself. The connection opened an escape route for Kolr, who went first for Rubedo’s fire and split his vengeful soul into four, one fragment for each forge.
Warlic warns that contact with Rubedo’s final flame will make Aleister whole. Galanoth and the Hero refuse to let Fiamme flee the consequences again. In their separate conversation, Galanoth says her professed concern masks a hunger for power: she valued Akriloth’s strength despite the lives the Dragon destroyed. Fiamme admits erasing Kolr’s name and glorifying his story. His theft of the flames forced her to face the person and ordeal she had chosen to ignore.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — Iosis of the Soul: witnesses and hidden travelers
Iosis of the Soul requires eighteen Rubedo Wings and speaking with Muusa and Felix on the central path. Warlic explains that the Matches were once human; their apparent feathered wings are the mind’s attempt to comprehend an otherworldly form. The scholars wonder whether such transformation resembles the flames’ original idea of perfection rather than humanity’s. They report Warlic’s uncertain memories of a possibly human mother, and speculate that the nature of the forge’s flames might resemble someone like Aiwass. These remain their hypotheses.
Muusa and Felix intend to intercept Varga, the Warfury, secretly ascending Rubedo. They hope to enlist Jinx’s Chaos despite the Hero’s unease, and know perfectly well she is following them while imagining herself undiscovered. They still worry about Maya but consider Varga more urgent. The forest’s other messages place Wargoth far away watching Lore take another son from him, and identify the smug hidden girl as a Chaos Twin; the named travelers’ plans have not yet been completed here.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — The Scorpion and the Fox: a task for the Shadows
The Scorpion and the Fox asks for fifteen Philosopher’s Eyes and a conversation with Daji. Warlic opposes Tara’s proposed leniency toward the Shadows, but admits he is hardly an authority on trust. Daji wants time to recover with the Hero’s Stranger before pursuing Astero. She blames the Stranger’s temper for their second defeat and fears Astero returning to the Lightguard with another lie about being attacked without cause. Letting the Shadows pursue him frees the party to address the immediate danger, though her desired outcome is to kill him.
Daji identifies the woman on the ground as her vessel. She claims the body was already dead when she found it, probably a Huli Jing related to the Yokai Isles’ Kitsune, and wants its familiar face back. She describes herself as a retired destroyer of nations and devourer of Light, once Wuji’s thirteenth Empress after Melchior killed her husband’s partners. Warlic’s Dalitong Keli requires five Warwick Dandelions for a tincture. He says the dangerous flowers serve in séances and may similarly help a Shadow attach to a corpse.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — The Ideal Champion
Deep in the forest, Rubedo’s flame has left Fiamme a cruel gift: a fiery likeness of her ideal Champion. The Ideal Champion requires its defeat before she changes her mind about destroying it. Warlic points out that Galanoth himself does not fit that ideal. Akriloth destroyed Galanoth’s family, yet Fiamme tolerated the Dragon’s power and prestige. This encounter makes her preference visible as a problem to confront, rather than proof that her ideal deserves admiration.
The last main quest, Kolr, requires defeating the Flame of Rubedo. Its description calls the target Maleno even though the native objective names Rubedo; the surrounding quest and scene identify this as the fourth fragment. Warlic plans for the Hero and Tara to subdue him while Fiamme, Galanoth, and Warlic return the soul to the Plane of Fire. Kolr is no longer trying to flee, and the disturbance threatens to draw Aleister to the final flame.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — Sons of Destruction: the encounter remembered
The past returns through Warlic’s fearful appeal to a father he wants no part of, while Kolr begs for help. The approaching Aleister asks whom he means, recognizes Warlic’s chosen white-haired form, and says the galaxies and nebulas he searched are ashes now. He invites his brother to burn together. Warlic cannot bear another repetition and cries out against it.
Blue flames engulf Kolr’s prone figure as he cries for Fiamme. She calls him pathetic and denies him the comfort of her warmth. She orders his name and shame forgotten. Aleister’s own question changes to why the encounter hurts so much, while Warlic demands to be left alone. The sequence binds the brothers’ pain to Kolr’s rejection without making every fleeting image an independent account of an entire lost world.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — Sons of Destruction: blame is not a remedy
Back before Kolr, Warlic admits he recognized the smoke but mistook Aleister for Wargoth. He hid and let others die because he feared facing that power alone. Worse, the loneliness had nearly persuaded him to leave with his brother. He names himself the source of everyone’s suffering and offers himself for revenge. The Hero objects that this will fix nothing. Kolr has waited for precisely this chance to punish Warlic, Fiamme, Aleister, and everyone else.
The Hero interrupts with a demand that the confrontation stop. Anger turns toward the secrets and the burden of never knowing what to do. Amid the struggle, a voice calls for the next move, and Galanoth tells Fiamme to take Kolr back. Kolr accuses her of abandoning him and Akriloth. Fiamme embraces the burning figure, admits what she did, and apologizes without asking forgiveness.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — Sons of Destruction: another interruption
Kolr demands that Fiamme die and burn. Her unfinished answer alarms the Hero, who recognizes a familiar pattern. The sequence briefly shows tentacles beneath a vast face against a stormy sky. An unlabelled warning calls this another trap. The Hero reaches into the blaze around Fiamme and Kolr, then cries out beside the spectre’s blade as the companions call out. Kolr rages that they are always in the way. Aleister breaks the blade into shards and pins Kolr down, taking back Rubedo’s final flame. The Hero addresses him; Kolr calls him an imposter and monster. The planned return of a defeated soul has become the reunion Warlic feared.
Aleister states that Wargoth sent him on a mission and that he intends to finish it. Warlic asks what he has to say to the Hero and Tara. He answers nothing, then dismisses them as toys he is done with. The hurt is sharper because it rejects the friendship on which the Hero staked the rescue and Warlic’s confession. Whether that rejection can be overcome becomes the party’s immediate task.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — Sons of Destruction: time granted for one brother
The Hero brings Time to a standstill for the confrontation with Aleister. Elsewhere in the forest, Daji and the Stranger recognize a familiar sensation but keep their attention on Astero, still somewhere in the mountains. The Stranger promises to make him grovel; Daji warns that no hiding place will matter if the others fail with Aleister. Tara refuses to consider their friendship finished. Warlic says the brothers’ masks have fallen away and promises not to run. The Hero vows that the adventure they began together will end together. An unlabelled demand closes the scene: "Show us who you really are."
Tara tells the Hero to look up: Aleister is gigantic, far beyond the person-sized son of Wargoth she imagined. Warlic describes the universe as gone still and thanks the Hero for privacy. He believes there is hope in the three of them confronting Aleister together. If the Old Worlds Order interferes, the Hero still has the amulet from Seabase Undine. Warlic says he can work with forty minutes; the dialogue does not turn that conditional fallback into a stated limit on the time stop itself.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — People allowed to move
The closing sequence returns to Thelima’s evacuation, showing civilians and Paladin escorts. Maya is among the figures identified in the scene’s source, although her route out of Fort Luma remains unexplained. The pause in Time has exceptions. Song acknowledges being able to move and chooses to trust the Hero, despite memories of Neso and Abel, warning that this will not end as cleanly as past crises. Elius recognizes the burden on the Hero’s face from his own leadership: responsibility had swallowed his former self, but one selfish thought or naive idea might still make a difference. Muusa and Felix use their freedom to hurry toward Varga and call for a later discussion of Ophelia where Jinx can hear it.
Fiamme and Galanoth are deliberately kept frozen while others on Rubedo can move. Their conversation about the wrongs committed against the current Champion is deferred until Aleister is settled. Daji and the Stranger receive the chance to pursue Astero toward Citrinitas, the one place Geopetal cannot search. Daji suspects he expected the Hero to succeed and is using the disruption for a head start. Their pursuit remains a task carried onward, not a capture achieved in Warwick.
Age of Ruin III: Warwick Forest — Fórnarkálfur: fragments of a discarded Champion
After Kolr, the two optional repeatable Fórnarkálfur variants ask for one Rubedo Flicker, one Kolr’s Needle, and one hundred Alkahest; the Legend variant requires membership. Warlic identifies the four hooded opponents as fragments of Kolr’s soul and asks the Hero to gather what still lingers from the Flame of Rubedo, the Idea of a Champion, and Rubedo Matches. These are investigations and rewards after the main confrontation, rather than additional versions of the ending.
Warlic recognizes Kolr’s abandonment of Fiamme and Akriloth without excusing how the Avatar used him. If Fiamme understood Aleister’s strength, why expect her Champion to defeat someone she herself could not face? The question leaves responsibility shared rather than neatly transferred to one coward or monster. The party goes on with Warlic finally willing to remain, and with the Hero and Tara still trying to reach the friend behind Aleister’s revealed nature.